Take Brexit Britain and Trump’s America. Add climate change, instability in the Middle East, cryptocurrencies, and self-driving cars… and you have the world in 2018: hopeful, yet seemingly unpredictable.
We have assembled 11 unlikely events that - if they somehow happened - have the potential to profoundly affect the world as we know it.
To assess the political, economic, financial, and social impacts, IG brought together global economic/political experts to give their perspectives and predictions.
Explore some of the great unknowns facing us all today
Learn more about this project
Category: Economy Region: Global
Our panel of experts (interviewed March-May 2018):
Associate Professor of Global Public Policy, University of Oxford
Dr Thomas Hale is Associate Professor of Global Public Policy and Director for China Engagement at Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He holds a PhD in Politics from Princeton University, a Masters degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and an AB in public policy from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. Hale has published four books, most recently Beyond Gridlock and Between Interests and Law: The Politics of Transnational Commercial Disputes.
Senior Market Analyst, IG
Shaun Murison is a senior market analyst (South Africa) for IG and has over a decade of experience in financial markets. He regularly presents CFD trading seminars around the country and is a regular commentator on the financial markets, contributing to media channels such as CNBC Africa and Business Day, and writing daily and weekly market reports. He is a registered person at the JSE as well as a Certified Financial Technician (CFTE).
Founder, Atlas Neue
Stephan Tual is the Founder of Atlas Neue, a development and financial services company which creates, funds and supports exciting ventures in the blockchain space. Tual helped raise $18.9 million as former CCO of Ethereum, now valued over $90bn. He is a blockchain expert in smart contracts and their decentralised applications. Stephan is also the founder and COO of slock.it, a project at the intersection of the IoT and blockchain that aims to address security, identity, coordination and privacy over billions of devices.
We asked our experts to rate how likely it is that China’s government-backed cryptocurrency will overtake bitcoin.
Panel members also rated the impact they would expect this event to have.
Find out about another risk facing the world in 2018 and beyond
The Social Impact